Please, let us import this ban into the US. The site hasn't been usable in almost ten years, but people keep insisting on dragging the corpse back out the grave.
Have done multiple times. Im not asking op to change, just to consider ther may be a large chunk of readers who cant see what they are referencing if they choose Imgur.
Nothing I found says anything about Zig folks being inherently against AI. It just looks like they don’t want to deal with “AI Slop” in contributions to their project, which is very understandable.
These are ~2 years behind state of the art from the looks of it. Still cool that they're releasing anything that's open for researchers to play with, but it's nothing groundbreaking.
No, it is not as good as Veo, but better than Grok, I would say. Definitely better than what was available 2 years ago. And it is only a 7B research model!
> Are other open weight video models also this small?
Apples models are weights-available not open weights, and yes, WAN 2.1, as well as the 14B models, also has 1.3B models; WAN 2.2, as well as the 14B models, also has a 5B model (the WAN 2.2 VAE used by Starflow-V is specifically the one used with the 5B model.) and because the WAN models are largely actually open weights models (Apache 2.0 licensed) there are lots of downstream open-licensed derivatives.
> Can this run on a single consumer card?
Modern model runtimes like ComfyUI can run models that do not fit in VRAM on a single consumer card by swapping model layers between RAM and VRAM as needed; models bigger than this can run on single consumer cards.
The interesting part is they chose to go with a normalizing flow approach, rather than the industry standard diffusion model approach. Not sure why they chose this direction as I haven’t read the paper yet.
Is $14 dollars for ad-free, unlimited access to literally billions of videos really a steep price? Personally if I were to get rid of all but one of my media subscriptions I would stick with this one, since it's got everything - entertainment, education, inspiration, you name it.
$14 is two days worth of living in my country for your average man on the street, among many other similar places. Imagine if you had to pay $200 to watch YouTube, that's how much these services cost for us.
They refuse to correct for purchasing power parity and are left with nothing in the end. Steam seems to do very well in comparison.
(I don't watch YouTube even for free, but practically everybody I know does without paying anything, and it makes a lot of sense).
There are a lot of things in this world besides YouTube Premium, which cost $14 or more. That some people in the world are very poor is no kind of argument as to how companies should price their products.
"Purchasing power parity" is a non-concept for almost 100% of companies and products. But YouTube Premium is priced differently in different regions. Sometimes much cheaper than $14.
The person you're responding to is not debating that the companies are setting the wrong prices, so no need to try to convince them that the companies are already setting prices "the right way".
They're explaining for people who don't seem to understand, why people are fine signing in to these kind of 3rd party apps in the first place, because the subscription price ends up being what these people earn in days, not hours.
YouTube is 10x the quality and 10x the quantity than any other video service.
As for the ads, YouTube Premium now has built-in sponsor skip. They can't really block sponsored segments, as that is a freedom of speech issue and also something they can't easily determine. Creators can just omit that some product is sponsored.
> YouTube is 10x the quality and 10x the quantity than any other video service.
I guess you could say YouTube surfaces a larger span of quality, from really shit quality to incredible high quality, which I guess is cool. But since they provide zero tools to actually discover the really high quality, and on top of that decide they know better what I want to watch than me (like the subscriptions page not starting with the last published video), does that really matter?
> as that is a freedom of speech issue
It isn't. Freedom of speech in the US (since Google is based there, and maybe you too?) is about the government placing restrictions, not companies or individuals. As a individual (or company), you're free to limit the speech of anyone who want on your platform, for any reason. You might face public outcry, but it isn't a freedom of speech issue as it's on a private platform in the first place.
They provide all the tools to discover high quality videos and channels. It's called "like and subscribe". If you use those features, it doesn't take long before YouTube shows you only high quality videos. And there's also the dislike button and "Do not recommend this channel again", if you need.
> Freedom of speech in the US...
Freedom of speech is a subject which is much larger than the US constitution. I'm not saying YouTube isn't legally allowed to block sponsored segments. I'm saying that they might not want to because they don't want to limit their creators' speech in that matter. Especially considering how easy it would be to side-step. What would be their reason? They've already made it easy to skip sponsored segments.
>Creators can just omit that some product is sponsored.
Not true in the US, where the FTC requires (and has required for decades) disclosure by the creator to the viewer whenever a payment has been made to the creator to promote anything. On Youtube, this is typically done by the creator's saying (in the video) "this video is sponsored by Foo Corporation", or, "I wish to thank the sponsor of this video, Foo Corporation".
Personally, I'm unhappy with Premium's built-in sponsor skip. For one thing it becomes available to me only after enough previous viewers have manually skipped over the sponsored segment. For another, it sometime skips ahead too far (probably because the viewers who manually skipped weren't precise in skipping exactly to the end of the sponsored segment). I'd much rather Youtube allowed the uploader to declare (to Youtube) that the upload is free of sponsors (e.g., by checking a box) and then punishing the uploader somehow if he routinely declares falsely. With that information, Youtube could and IMHO should give me the option of telling Youtube somehow (e.g., by checking a box) that I prefer for sponsored videos to be omitted from my recommendations.
Individual Youtube creators in the US most certainly are concerned about the FTC and about this rule specifically because they do not want to find themselves in court explaining to a judge why they shouldn't pay a big fine.
Also, if the creator doesn't follow the rule, the sponsor can be fined by the FTC, so even before the FTC notices the violation, the sponsor will probably notice and refuse to continue the relationship unless the creator's videos comes into compliance with the rule.
Again, this rule has been in effect for decades in the US. Advertisements in the US must be labeled as such. Ditto paid endorsements.
Youtube is both 10x and 0.1x the quality, and the official app has no way to filter it. They even removed the feature (downvotes) to let the user filter it.
And the proliferation of AI videoslop is only making the 0.1x side larger and larger
essentially every YouTuber I've watched who discussed their financials said that their sponsorships brought in several times more money than all forms of YouTube money.
which is a very niche slice, and I have no idea how representative it is in aggregate. but sponsorships happen because they pay well enough to annoy every viewer, not just ones that aren't using the better-paying Premium - they generally are not cheap, to say the least.
If you look at Premium, it's about 100x more lucrative than regular views. So I'm pretty sure I'm providing more money to creators than the skipped ads.
To be clear: I completely believe that Premium is a major source for many people. 100%. I just haven't seen many examples of it, outside tubers that have zero sponsorships (because they're small and/or not doing the low-value slightly-shady ones that get spammed everywhere). I'm thrilled that Premium seems to pay relatively well, it's better for everyone to move away from ads where possible.
LTT though is a rather significant outlier in terms of subscribers (16.6 million right now). For truly large channels it's reasonable for the equation to be different.
And the equation for them really is different. They're a company with ~100 employees¹ and YouTube and video sponsorships came out to just 11.6% (ads AND premium) and 9.2% respectively of their multi-person company income. People claiming "SponsorBlock steals from creators" aren't talking about LTT, they're talking about smaller creators for whom YouTube stuff is a majority of their income.
Plus, like. Ads+premium lumped into one. It wouldn't surprise me if premium was lower than sponsorships.
I suspect we're in different niches then or something. If ya don't mind sharing / have links handy, do you have any examples? I'm curious what kind of channel it works well for.
I can try to hunt mine down, but most of the examples I've had were from a couple years ago, and YouTube's history is rather hard to search for stuff like that :| Not high odds of success.
These are niche Russian-language channels (@Varlamov, @Max_Katz). They disclosed their finances to drive up Patreon/Youtube subscriptions because Youtube stopped monetization from Russia.
I've been trying to find public numbers for English-language channels, but wow. So much slop.
* $0.00 plus additional risk that the author of the alternative you are using is compromised, you end up using a malicious version of that alternative, and get pwned.
Obviously for some/many, that trade-off is totally cool. But it needs to be included in the analysis, otherwise you're being dishonest.
Not to mention included YouTube Music. It's one of the few subs I pay for, because I watch a _lot_ of YouTube on the TV. And also like to have it in the background for "Podcast" style videos where the video is really only an accompaniment.
That's actually worse. They used to have a separate YouTube subscription. I don't want (to pay for) YouTube Music, because I already have Apple Music and Tidal, which I prefer.
The US is not the world, in many countries there was a YouTube subscription without Music. I was even subscribed to it! Here is an article from the largest Dutch website that announced that Google was going to axe that subscription type:
Also, since Youtube Music is just a skin over Youtube, it's not true that your subscription must necessarily be cheaper if there were no Youtube Music.
I'm the opposite. With YouTube Music, I don't need Apple Music, Spotify, Tidal, or any other service. For me, YouTube Premium is a good deal, and other than Fubo TV it's the only streaming media subscription I have.
Insane hyperbole here, this guy's adblock = risking humanity losing it's 2nd most important platform owned by one of the most profitable companies in the world
OpenAI thought of it first, should YouTube get a government backstop too?
I am dubious about the importance of Youtube. If it disappeared tomorrow how long would it take for most videos to reappear elsewhere? Some of the creators I watch do have the videos available elsewhere. Veritasium is on Odysee, lots of people are on Nebula (and release videos there that are not on Youtube), etc.
I think there is a good argument that having a single dominant platform has been harmful.
Imo, most videos would never be re-uploaded somewhere else. Currently-active creators that choose to keep a backup copy of their videos are probably the minority of creators.
Let’s not get too hasty comparing YouTube to Wikipedia. Maybe what you watch on YouTube is interesting and educational, but let’s not forget it’s also a major platform for misinformation, propaganda, conspiracy theories, radicalisation, scams…
That's extremely subjective, but I'd rather save that $14 a month towards retirement. And if YouTube was only available with ads... well, that's no videos for me, maybe for the better, I would waste less time.
In high school I knew a kid who would go around looting loose change from unlocked cars. He'd pull the driver side door open like it was his car, hop in, loot the center console, then hop out like nothing happened. He wouldn't take valuables (as far as I knew), just change, so maybe a few bucks per car.
His rationale? "Nobody will cry over a few missing quarters and they are free to lock their doors anyway."
The reason it's not stealing is because the cost to the serve content is tiny (spare change) and the sites don't stop you from viewing it with ad-blocker (unlocked doors).
That's a very generous characterization of what most YouTube content is.
My experience is that you are basically paying to remove the official ads from your disguised ads.
The various algorithm tweaks for engagement these past few years and the introduction of shorts have significantly degraded the content quality and many good channels have just thrown the towel.
Right, I want premium because it's a "fair" payment for the service I use and would help support the people who make good content, but the vast majority of those dollars go to the company who is solely at fault for encouraging and essentially requiring creators to use clickbait and fake thumbnails and put out slop every single day and never ever ever try doing something slightly different and consistently change things in ways that those creators do not want and hate. Every complaint you likely have about youtube content was forced by youtube for their own profitability. Don't like sponsorships? People mostly started seeking them out after Google cut ad payouts essentially in half with no warning. Don't like videos being way longer than they need to be? That's because youtube started paying out based on watch time instead of views and that encourages padding. Don't like censorship? It was Youtube's choice to shadowban/punish anyone who even said the word pandemic during a literal global pandemic that people probably wanted to talk about, even in passing. Buy into Youtube's new "channel member" feature in good faith? Well then Youtube changed it so that the videos that only members can watch are now shoved in front of everyone's eyeballs without your approval or desire or asking and it's really annoying to all your viewers. Don't like every video spending 30 seconds telling you to subscribe and "hit that like button" and then the fucking bell? That's because google decided that if your video didn't have a high enough click through rate, it wouldn't be shown to subscribers at all, and then introduced the bell for "subscribers but for real", and then even that hasn't really been honored. Youtube has for example suddenly decided that I should be shown low view russian language plagiarism of videos I like that have then been autodubbed back into english rather than the video from one of my subscriptions that was copied to make the russian video. How is that supposed to help anyone?
I will happily pay for youtube when they show that they want to encourage good content and help empower the people who make that good content, but Google doesn't want to do that because Mr Beast slop advertising to your kids is more profitable.
Listen, I only make about $350-$400 a week after taxes and deductions. So, yes, $14 a month is a LOT. With my income, even $5 can and does break the bank if I'm not careful. Not everyone has a SWE's salary.
basically, yeah. there's a white fast forward button that appears during frequently fast forwarded sections, which unsurprisingly happens to be sponsor sections.
It's >12x the ad revenue they bring in per monthly-active YouTube user (suggesting they'd still be happy with a much lower price), and the price has increased 75% in the last decade (compared to the 40% real inflation over that period, suggesting they intend to continue increasing the price till public backlash or other effects reduce their total revenue). Plus they're boiling the frog, slowly adding ads back in to music and shorts for premium users, and we'll see how far that initiative goes.
> Plus they're boiling the frog, slowly adding ads back in to music and shorts for premium users
Do you have a source for this?
I do value watching unlimited youtube videos without ads, but if they're gonna add the ads back in, I'd easily stop paying for the one google product I currently pay for (and honestly the only reason I haven't already done this is laziness and convenience)
It launched at $9.99[1] and is now $13.99[2] which I believe to be a 40% increase, i.e. flat in real dollars. If like most people you subscribe for a year, it's only $11.67/mo.
This suggests that you initially subscribed to Google Play Music at their launch special price, and were later grandfathered into getting YouTube Premium at the same price, or that you used YouTube Music Key (yes, more product roadmap confusion!) with the same outcome, or that you signed up with a student account (this is still $7.99 today).
It's only a matter of time this will be fixed, also there probably already are custom LoRAs that can remove jpeg artifacts. So it's not a matter of if, only when.
I dont think so. You cant train away a compression artifact that comes from the model's core architecture, LoRAs can smooth or hide artifacts, but some detail will be inevitably lost. You can try to hide artifacts but not remove them without retraining the whole model on RAW sensor data.
Words are cheap, but "We are sorry." is a surprisingly rare thing for a company to say (they will usually sugarcoat it, shift blame, add qualifiers, use weasel words, etc.), so it's refreshing to hear that.
This is a classic example of a fake apology: "We regret that this incident has caused worry for our partners and people" they are not really "sorry" that data was stolen but only "regret" that their partners are worried. No word on how they will prevent this in the future and how it even happened. Instead it gets downplayed ("legacy third-party","less than 25% were affected" (which is a huge number), no word on what data exactly).
How would the apology need to be worded so that it does not get interpreted as a fake apology?
In terms of "downplaying" it seems like they are pretty concrete in sharing the blast radius. If less than 25% of users were affected, how else should they phrase this? They do say that this was data used for onboarding merchants that was on a system that was used in the past and is no longer used.
I am as annoyed by companies sugar coating responses, but here the response sounds refreshingly concrete and more genuine than most.
We are truly sorry for the impact this has no doubt caused on our customers and partners businesses. This clearly should never have happened, and we take full responsibility.
Whilst we can never put into words how deeply sorry we are, we will work tirelessly to make this right with each and every one of you, starting with a full account of what transpired, and the steps we are going to be taking immediately to ensure nothing like this can ever happen again.
We want to work directly with you to help minimise the impact on you, and will be reaching out to every customer directly to help understand their immediate needs. If that means helping you migrate away to another platform, then so be it - we will assist in any way we can. Trust should be earn't, and we completely understand that in this instance your trust in us has understandably been shaken.
Upvoted because that seemed like a genuine apology other than this phrase
> Whilst we can never put into words how deeply sorry we are
To my European ears that comes across as hyperbolic and insincere but maybe it’s fine for an American audience. These things are very culture-dependent.
an effective apology establishes accountability, demonstrates reflection on what caused the problem, and commits to concrete changes to prevent it from reoccurring
I always presume the "We are sorry" opens up to financial compensation, whereas the "we regret that you are worried" does not.
In my country, this debate is being held WRT the atrocities my country committed in its (former) colonies, and towards enslaved humans¹. Our king and prime minister never truly "apologized". Because, I kid you not, the government fears that this opens up possibilities for financial reparation or compensation and the government doesn't want to pay this. They basically searched for the words that sound as close to apologies as possible, but aren't words that require one to act on the apologies.
¹ I'm talking about The Netherlands. Where such atrocities were committed as close as one and a half generations ago still (1949) (https://www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/blog/2022/10/how-do-dutc...) but mostly during what is still called "The Golden Age".
If you are unwilling to say "We are sorry" because "that opens you up to lawsuits" then you are not sorry.
Letting business concerns trump human empathy is exactly the damn problem and exactly why these companies still deserve immense ire no matter how they word their "We don't want to admit fault but we want you to think we care" press release. This is also true of something like the Dutch crown or the USA having tons of people being extremely upset at the suggestion of teaching kids what the US has actually done in it's history.
Agreed. It's just a classic way to manipulate the viewers. They just wanted to sound edgy for not paying a ransom, which is definitely a good thing. Never pay these crooks but you left a legacy system online without any protections? That's serious
> No word on how they will prevent this in the future and how it even happened.
Because these things take time, while you need to disclose that something happened as fast as possible to your customers (in the EU, you are mandated by the GDPR, for instance).
Have you tried Composer 1 from Cursor? It enables a totally different way of AI coding - instead of giving the LLM a long prompt and waiting minutes for it to finish, you give it a shorter prompt to just write one small thing and it finishes in seconds. There’s no interruption, you stay in the flow, and in control of what you’re building.
It is better, but I hated how some time ago they started showing trailers at the start of a show, with no option to turn this off. It’s a small thing but it’s super annoying, if I want to check out what’s new I will do it myself, thank you very much.
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